Well I have been doing photo manipulation for a while so I thought I would make a tutorial. This tutorial is for medium advanced users who already know how to do most of the things I am going to show.

Alrightythen lets start!

So go and pic an image that you have during the day time. Try to pick one without very many distracting objects like bright colored cars or animals etc. Here is mine I took in Southern Utah in the High Desert.

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/5263/gedc10471.png

Now de-saturate the whole picture; add contrast, and at the same time; lower the brightness.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/4624/gedc10472.png

Now take your airbrush and brush over the areas on the ground that you want shadowed. Then set the mode to 'Hard Light'.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/4336/gedc10473.png

So now that the ground layer is set up we need to work on the horizon line and above. Select the top half and make it it's own layer. Now adjust the shadow levels for certain areas (circled in white). Once I picked the areas I wanted adjusted for shadow levels I faded the layer into the background layer.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/9971/gedc10474.png

Then make a new layer, set it to multiply, and brush in all the bright sunlight coming from it's direction in the origional photo. Then I put the layer to 88% opacity so you can see some of the light for adjusting it later on.

Now it is time for highlights and moon light. Pull out all the areas that you want effected by the light souce. Duplicate some of those areas and boost the contrast and brightness. Now blend them (it might be easier to just dodge some of them.)
Then for moonlight make a new layer and make a blue spotlight effect by using a soft brush an brushing around and setting it to screen mode.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/1701/gedc10477.png

Now take your brush tool and spot around the areas that you think will be good for doing moon reflections and set this layer to overlay.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/4608/gedc10478.png

Now go through and highlight some edge areas and make some lighting adjustments to bring out the highlights.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/2322/gedc10479.png

Check the overall light levels. Merge all the layers or make an applied image layer and then adjust your contrast, and add effects (dodging, etc) and little details to what you like to finish it up!

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/2610/gedc104710.png

Before:
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/5263/gedc10471.png

After:
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/2610/gedc104710.png

Post your results here if you try it!

GingerScraps

07-18-2009, 06:34 AM

wow - cool Zar!! thank you for sharing :)

nutsaboutgabe

07-18-2009, 11:19 AM

very cool. can't wait to give it a try.

tara5681

07-18-2009, 08:44 PM

That is incredible Zar!

Zar

07-20-2009, 11:37 PM

Thanks!

If you have any questions about some of the steps and how to do it; feel free to ask!